


Below

by Templar_Headache



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Circle of Magi, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Kinloch Hold, Physical and Psychological Abuse, Solitary Confinement, the Circle sucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 07:16:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8195582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Templar_Headache/pseuds/Templar_Headache
Summary: The Rite of Tranquility, legally, could not be used on those who had passed their Harrowing. Hearing the wailing beneath her, however, Aelyssa Amell thought that perhaps even that would be a kinder punishment.





	

The Rite of Tranquility, legally, could not be used on those who had passed their Harrowing. Hearing the wailing beneath her, however, Aelyssa Amell thought that perhaps even that would be a kinder punishment.

The apprentices weren't told much of what had happened, but they pieced it together all the same. The boy who always managed to escape - a man now, she corrected herself, realizing morbidly how long they'd all been there - had been captured again, just like he always was. He had smiled and made excuses as to why he just -had- to escape, why the Templars should go easy on him - but then, he was missing.

They did not wonder where he went for long.

If there were smiles or jests to be had in the Circle, there were none that first night, only looks of fear amongst the apprentices. The walls and floor of Kinloch were thick stone, but they were old as well, and she considered, perhaps, that they were _meant_ to echo. They had assumed what to them was 'the worst' - surely the man had been put out of his mischief in an 'accident', they thought.

Until they heard the screaming.

By the Maker, the man was loud; he hollered and shouted and while none of the words were quite clear, the apprentices shot each other looks of terror, imaginations piecing together a hundred desperate variants of "Let me out!"

Aelyssa jumped each time she heard the reverberating cries, her face twisting in concentration on a desperate attempt to block the sound from her mind. She heard Jowan crying nearby; sobbing openly into his hands and shaking, he trembled with such force she was concerned he might actually fall off the bed. He didn't bother to hide his tears; he wasn't the only one crying. There was no sound but muffled screams, broken tears, and the shifting of blankets, and the silence drove each sob and wail into one another like a dagger.

She could feel the terror in them all. The man had once given them a vague, if not cursory hope; every time he ran, they wanted to follow, and every time he came back with little more than a slap on the wrist, they thought, perhaps, running wouldn't be so bad.

The wailing from below them ripped that hope away in an instant. I'f they'd had any desire to run, it was gone. It was better here in the dingy, uncomfortable bunks than it ever would be locked beneath the cold stone of the Hold. They knew they could never run. Even tranquility was better than this.

For three days, the wailing below them did not stop; they pretended to be reading and writing and studying, but they all were paralyzed in the echoes, which were slowly growing dejected and hoarse. At some point they'd stopped having the pattern of speech, and now were little more than a droning monotone of desperate, guttural screaming.

And then, as soon as it had begun, it stopped. He stopped. The silence was as terrifying as the shrieking in the utter lack of knowing why - why had he stopped? Some of the apprentices didn't bother to hide their wet cheeks, they'd _known_ that man and he _never_ gave up on trying to escape, and he was not known to be quiet. He was dead; the Templars had locked him away and let him starve into nothingness, most likely choking on his own filth in the end, unable to move, unable to cry... Others still, though with next to no confidence, exclaimed he must be alive, he simply didn't see the point of shouting anymore, surely they wouldn't _leave_ him down there, they wouldn't just _murder_ him like that... But it was more of an attempt to convince themselves, really, than anything else.

The Templars did not bother them much in the following weeks, the following months - the apprentices were obedient. They could not run, not ever again, or it would be them locked in that cell beneath the Hold, screaming until their hunger took them. Their bones would rot against his, against the bones of those who had been punished before them. There was no escape. There could never be an escape.

There was no more hope.

\-------

Aelyssa barely recognized him. His skin was taught against his bones, his robes hanging loosely off him like they might dress a corpse. His golden eyes were glazed, swaying across them all with a dazed wariness, emotion entirely sucked from his features. Had she not known where he had been, she would have assumed him to be Tranquil; Jowan next to her chewed his nails and turned away, breathing shortly in panicked bursts. She squeezed his shoulder, but she knew it wasn't nearly enough.

All the man could do was sit, sit and listen to the senior enchanters try to remind him how to speak, try to remind him how to act. He smiled and muttered to himself about his only friend, who was grey, and fat, and furry, and very angry. It was only thing he seemed to know how to do, and no one could change his mind. He did not move his body, legs and arms and neck falling like a limp ragdoll wherever he was placed - only his lips, only to repeat; _my only friend, grey and fat, furry and angry. They killed him, he was angry. My only friend. Where is he?_

She did not have the stomach to keep watching; none of them did. Even the Tranquil seemed to intentionally steer clear - most likely because interfering was an illogical action, but she held to the naive hope that perhaps some part of them knew what had happened was wrong. All over again, the apprentices were broken. If they ran, this was their fate - a shell, a broken mind, worse than death, worse than Tranquility. There was no risk worth hearing the screaming all over again. No risk worth being the one doing the screaming.

They were trapped here. They were trapped here forever.

Aelyssa made it a point not to cry, but she knew the worst part was not simply that he had been doomed to such a fate. They'd needed an example, something to remind them all that they were never going to escape. He was not a person to them; he was merely a weapon. 

She let the tears fall, and hot thunder coursed through her. Rage.

She would escape. For him - for all of them. She would not be an example.

\-------

"I recognize you," The strange mage cooed with a bubbly smirk. "You were in the Fereldan Circle!"

She smirked at him and nodded, a dark knot twisting in her stomach. "You DO look awfully familiar. What's your name again?"

"They call me Anders," the man beamed, his golden eyes-

His eyes-

_Glazed over, distant, dilated wrong and darting around at everything. He stared through them, beyond them, at nothing, at everything - he opened his mouth and there were no words, so he shut them again -_

His golden eyes glittered, and she found herself, for the first time in a year, frozen in fear.

There was no escape. You could run, but it was with you - it was always with you, ready to drag you below.

"You made it," she whispered, but it was more to herself than anything. 

They made it.


End file.
